Nikolai Yezhov

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (1 May 1895-4 February 1940) was the USSR People's Commissar for Internal Affairs from 26 September 1936 to 25 November 1938, succeeding Genrikh Yagoda and preceding Lavrentiy Beria.

Biography
Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov was born in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire in 1895. He joined the Bolsheviks in April 1917 and took part in the October Revolution in 1917; during the Russian Civil War, he was a political commissar in the Red Army. He then worked for the CPSU Central Committee, becoming a member in 1934. He became the head of the NKVD as People's Commissar for Internal Affairs in 1936. In this capacity, he led Joseph Stalin's terror campaign. By this time a drug addict, he became the most feared man in the Soviet Union after Stalin. The Great Purge is also known as the Yezhovschchina after his reign of terror. Briefly a member of the Politburo from 1937, he was dismissed by the NKVD and replaced by Lavrentiy Beria in December 1938. He was arrested in March 1939 and shot at an NKVD station in Moscow in 1940.